Entrepreneurs for Free Enterprise Condemns Facebook’s

“Suppression” of Conservatives and Right-Leaning Media Outlets

The group of concerned entrepreneurs expresses concern for the platform’s censorship of Conservative views and opinions in advance of the mid-term elections and Senate Judiciary Hearings around Cambridge Analytical on April 10th

Rockville, MD – March 28, 2018 –The Entrepreneurs for Free Enterprise (EFFE), a leading group of business owners dedicated to ensuring a free and fair electoral and political process for all Americans, announces today its condemnation of Facebook for its blatant suppression of Conservative views throughout its platform, particularly escalating as the mid-term elections approach.

This seeming desire the leading social networking platform has for its users to be “ignorant and compliant” is at the center of the recent uncovering of the censorship of Conservative and Conservative-leaning individuals and publishers. These activities are literally enabling Facebook to push its own Liberal agenda in the name of “community” and rob its users of the objectivity and availability of free speech and information under the First Amendment to the Constitution.

A recent article by The Daily Caller details a number of shocking changes Facebook made over a period of 8 days in January, 2018 to its algorithms, in a seeming attempt to alter the information users are seeing and exposed to in their own dedicated newsfeeds. In particular, it is noted that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg made not one, but two key changes to its algorithms that were undertaken with the goal of benefiting specific media outlets and taking traffic, hiding information, and suppressing opinions from others. These changes were made all the more concerning when it was found that the information being both suppressed and boosted is laden with political overtone and implication, with Conservative individuals and publishers being hardest hit and most affected.

The process by which supposed “trusted sources” were determined was through a generic, informal, and highly subjective survey of users by Facebook, comprised of two questions (1. Whether they had heard of a website (‘yes/no’) and 2. How much they trusted each (‘entirely’ to ‘not at all’). This information was then used in apparent combination with Facebook executives’ own opinions to boost “quality” news sources, even if they lacked large-scale name recognition and visibility and thus would have had poor survey results. Facebook’s Campbell Brown indicated this disturbing overstep of power and control while speaking at a tech conference last month.

Details around the changes include:

Rapid cuts to news articles’ share of the newsfeed from 5% to 4% over the next several months; and

Conscious boosting of certain “trusted” news outlets and the suppression of others, which appeared “less trustworthy” sources according to a statement made by Zuckerberg directly. This obviously subjective judgment appears to have been made at the high level within Facebook and without consent or even awareness from individual users.

According to an analysis of Facebook engagement data by The Outline from research tool BuzzSumo, Conservative and other identified right-wing publishers, including Fox News, Breitbart, and Gateway Pundit, dropped as much as 55% in their engagement totals for February, 2018 as a result of these changes – while the engagement figures for largely liberal publishers were essentially unchanged and unaffected.

“This suppression of information, as well as the blatant partisanship Facebook is demonstrating in its censorship of certain information and agenda to push other facts and news to its users instead violates everyone’s 1st Amendment rights. This issue also highlights the disturbing and insidious power these large social media platforms have in our lives and to shape our minds and thoughts,” EFFE Steering Committee Member, Robyn Sachs said. “Not only is Facebook violating our freedom of speech, press, and information, these efforts show that we as Americans are being manipulated – largely without our knowledge and definitely our consent- on platforms like Facebook that we formerly trusted to connect with friends and colleagues and share information about our lives. This must stop and it is critical we make our government aware of this issue!.”

Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, has been invited alongside Google CEO, Sundar Pichai, and Twitter CEO, Jack Dorsey, to testify on the data mining/privacy scandal involving Cambridge Analytical at a congressional hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, set for April 10, 2018.

Entrepreneurs for Free Enterprise is an organization founded in 2012 to educate the general public on the major issues surrounding the Presidential Election. Entrepreneurs for Free Enterprise organization takes it upon themselves to make sure that citizens are told the entire story to allow them to make an educated vote in November’s election with all the facts in front of them. For additional information on Entrepreneurs for Free Enterprise, please contact info@entrepreneursforfreeenterprise.org. General information can be obtained by accessing the organization’s web site at www.effe4usa.org, the organization’s Twitter page at @EFFE4USA or the organization’s Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/EFFE4USA.